


a thousand one stories (every single one of them's a lie)

by letthecitybreathe



Category: Ghost Quartet - Malloy, Naruto
Genre: BUT IT FITS! THEY BOTH HAVE SIBLING REINCARNATION AND GRUDGES I HAD TO, Gen, ive been listening to this musical for like two years and i STILL am confused, oh god this is the nichest and also worst thing ive ever written, please do not expect this to be coherent, sorry david malloy for interpreting ur work thru a naruto lense it is All I Can Do, sorry ghost quartet stans for making you think you got fic only for it to be naruto
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 13:32:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14812299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/letthecitybreathe/pseuds/letthecitybreathe
Summary: There’s a camera shop. Somewhere, in the vast underworld of Manhattan, a boy got hit by a subway train.Sasuke’s hands can’t stop shaking.or, i attempt to mash naruto and my favorite, barely coherent musical together





	a thousand one stories (every single one of them's a lie)

**Author's Note:**

> oh god this is SO niche. only way to understand this mess is with an IN DEBTH understanding of ghost quartet, which you can Kind Of Fudge by listening to the [live album](https://davemalloy.bandcamp.com/album/live-at-the-mckittrick) and reading the [genius annotated lyrics](https://genius.com/artists/Ghost-quartet)

There’s a camera shop. Somewhere, in the vast underworld of Manhattan, a boy got hit by a subway train.

Sasuke’s hands can’t stop shaking.

He _watched_. He stood there, watched, and slowly – _deliberately_ – took a picture. He didn’t stop to look at the picture, dropped the camera and let it smash to the floor, but his yellow hair is _seared_ into his eyes.

He’s inside the camera shop. He needs a drink.

“Can I help you?”

He sees brightbright _bright_ yellow hair and everything seizes inside of him for a moment, freezing and turning to ice before he remembers that it’s _over_ , this is somewhere different and the boy on the subway is _dead_ and Sasuke did _nothing_ –

Stop.

Breathe.

“I hope so,” he says, and his voice trembles, wobbles, but if he stops to clear his throat he thinks he’ll break so he forges on, continues, says, “I lost my camera.”

“Did someone steal it?” the boy asks, hopeful and helpful and so, so naïve.

(The last addition comes from somewhere deep inside, almost shocking Sasuke. He ignores it. He’s been ignoring a lot of things, lately.)

“No,” he says. “It got smashed.”

The boy smiles –

(Naïve, naïve, _naïve_ –)

“Maybe we can repair it?”

(So _fucking_ naïve)

“It got smashed and lost. The pieces are lost.”

He has to force the words out through the lump in his throat.

The boy’s smile is sad, and that _thing_ in Sasuke’s headchestheart has settled down and stopped creeping into his thoughts, so he’ll take it.

“I’m sorry,” the boy says, and then, “Here. Have some whisky.”

Sasuke doesn’t know where the whisky came from. He doesn’t care where the whisky came from, either. He takes the glass handed to him. “Thank you,” he says, because his mother raised him to have manners, even if she didn’t raise him to help someone from getting _run over_ –

“It was a real camera? Not a phone?”

The disgust is clear on the boy’s face, and Sasuke can’t help but mirror it. The boy on the platform had a phone, too. He was staring at it before he got pushed.

“Not a phone. I do _not_ like phones.”

The boy smiles again. It looks like he does that a lot.

(Sasuke remembers that smile. He reaches out, grasps, _pulls_ , tries to bring the memory closer, but it fades and fades and fades until it’s gone)

“Me neither,” the boy says. He says it like it means something, like Sasuke’s supposed to know what he’s thinking. “Well, we’ll get you all set up with a new camera. But sit first, and drink a bit. You need to take care of yourself.”

It’s said like he knows how Sasuke stays up almost every night, staring at the wall, staring at the ceiling, staring in the goddamn mirror as if it’ll reveal something to him, as if these whispers he keeps hearing will make sense if he just stares long enough.

He sits down and doesn’t let himself think, stares blankly into the glass of whisky as the boy putters around the shop.

“Are you traveling?”

The words ring out in the silence of the shop, jarring Sasuke out of whatever trance he’d entered while staring at the whisky. “Yes, from Portland,” he answers automatically.

The boy visibly brightens again, almost like the sun. Sasuke wonders idly if he comes with a dimmer. “Oh! I’ve been there once. They have that cool library.”

Sasuke snorts before he can help himself. “That’s Seattle.”

He watches the boy’s imaginary dimmer go down as he blushes and rubs the back of his neck. “Oh. I get them mixed up.” And then he laughs, and even though Sasuke can tell it’s just meant to fill the silence it fills the room like a bell. “Did you grow up there?” he asks.

“Yes,” Sasuke says, “when I was a kid.” He doesn’t think about that much, either. He doesn’t think about a lot of things.

“That’s nice,” the boy says. “It’s nice to have roots.”

There’s a look on his face, not quite wistful or sad but _knowing_ , as if there’s something he sees that Sasuke doesn’t. He brushes it aside, though, tries not to focus on it and forces himself to be polite. “What about you?” he asks. “Have you been here long?”

The boy smiles, like he’s been _waiting_ for Sasuke to ask that, but that doesn’t make any sense.

“This store has been in my family for four generations,” he says. “That fiddle on the wall over there belonged to my great grandfather. His name was Indra.”

The name sparks something in Sasuke’s chest, recognition, except he’s never heard that name before in his life. He almost blurts out _that’s my name!_ but that’s _wrong_ , and he doesn’t even know where the thought comes from.

He sets down the glass of whisky instead, standing up and walking towards the fiddle. “It’s so white,” he says, mostly to himself, before asking, “What’s it made of?”

He can’t see the boy, but he can tell that he’s smiling. “An old breastbone,” he answers, and Sasuke steps back, wary, as if there are ghosts attached to it.

“Creepy,” he says, for lack of anything else to say.

“It was the breastbone of his brother,” Naruto says, which does nothing to quell Sasuke’s nerves. “His name was Ashura. I’ll tell you the story.”

 

Naruto tells him.

Sasuke _remembers_.

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i am on tumblr as [glitteratti](http://glitteratti.tumblr.com/). talk to me if you like naruto OR ghost quartet. if you like both im BEGGING you to talk to me. i'll pay you to talk to me. i have so many thoughts.


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